He saw early in his freshman season at Clay in 2011 just how much work was in front of him to reach those targets. Every chance that he got, Breindel hopped in the car with his mother behind the wheel and hit the road looking for every opportunity to get better.

“I did 80 matches in the offseason after my freshman year,” said Breindel, a junior who finished 53-3 and won the Class 1A state championship in the 145-pound weight class. “I went to every tournament I could. My freshman offseason is where I made my big jump.”

Breindel would find a greco or a freestyle meet online and then tell his mother, Julie Breindel-Hill about it. While most tournaments were in the Central Florida region, anything within driving distance — as long as they could make the weigh-ins — was fair game.

“We’d pack up on Friday night, drive, do the weigh-in, wrestle Saturday and sometimes Sunday,” Breindel-Hill said. “A lot of times it was wrestle all weekend, just one match after another. It’s been awesome to watch him. Probably my favorite part is he’s been the one pursuing it. I’ve just been the ride.”

The catch was that Breindel wasn’t a natural wrestler, he made himself into one. Breindel’s mindset was geared more toward football until he got an introduction to wrestling from his sister’s boyfriend, who was then a wrestler at Clay. A passing interest led to inquiring more about wrestling, and those inquiries soon turned in to giving it a shot.

So in seventh grade at Lake Asbury Middle School, Breindel got on the mat for the first time and never looked back. That led him into getting involved in Clay County’s active club wrestling circuit. By the time he arrived at high school in 2011, Breindel had shaken off the interest in football and gone full-on wrestling.

“He said, ‘I want to be a state champ,’ ” Blue Devils coach Jim Reape said. “Every camp we had, he went to; every practice we had, he was there.”

It was during that first year at Clay that Breindel got a bit of a reality check. He saw quickly just how much work it was going to take just to make the lineup at the area’s top wrestling program.

“After wrestling JV, I said ‘I’ve got to get better to make the varsity lineup,’ ” Breindel said. “I wanted to win state.”

That’s where Breindel’s literal drive began, and led he and his mother around the Southeast, entering any and every tournament that he could find. When he returned for the high school season in the winter of 2012, Breindel was a different grappler.

“I felt like he certainly had the ability to do it,” Reape said. “There’s a certain quality about a guy’s drive. Guys who win state titles have a certain comfort level. Being in those pressure situations is the equivalent of a guy who wants the ball in his hands at the end of game in basketball. Not everybody wants to do that. Adam’s gung-ho to be in that role. He has that quality.”

After a third-place finish at state his sophomore season, Breindel promised himself that he would do better than that this time. By the time the tournament rolled around in 2014, there was no slowing Breindel down. His closest match at state was a 10-4 win in the semifinals.

“I knew this year I didn’t want ... anything less than what I did last year,” he said. “I wanted to win this year, I wasn’t going to settle for anything but first.”